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Thursday, March 06, 2008
Laura Paskus on Ballot Booth Woes
In the aftermath of our recent Democratic presidential caucus, Laura Paskus takes an indepth look at New Mexico's election system and its problems past and present in this week's Santa Fe Reporter. She tries to find an answer to the question, "Can New Mexico Run a Successful Election?"
With critical presidential, Congressional and local elections on tap this coming November, citizens and advocacy groups here and all over the nation are questioning whether we can trust the voting systems that are crucial to our democracy. What can we do to help ensure the integrity of our elections? The first step has to be to learn more about how they work.
I'm not providing any excerpts from Laura's piece because you really need to read the entire article. Comments?
March 6, 2008 at 01:33 AM in 2008 Presidential Primary, Election Reform & Voting | Permalink
Comments
Here is the absolute nuttiest thing I've heard out of Herrera's office, from the article:
New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera isn’t worried about the machines or the software, according to her spokesman James Flores, although he also points out that ES&S contracts were signed prior to her administration.
Herrera was repeatedly unavailable for comment, but Flores reiterated her office’s confidence in the system.
“I have answered that same question several times, and that is: We are very confident with the system that is in place right now, with ES&S, and we look forward to the primary and general election,” he says. “We are very confident that it’s going to run smoothly, and we are going to do the best that we can—as we always do.”
This is why Herrera has to go...she has no fucking clue what damage can be done with electronic machines run by a partisan company on proprietary software.
I talked with Robert Adams today, as the Bern Co audits are in the works, and asked how things were coming out. He said that the audit is getting about a 70% match from hand count to machine count. That's after 2 handcounts, and they are going to do a thrid just to be sure on their handcounts.
70%!!!!! WTF WTF WTF???
So 30% of the ballots were counted incorrectly. And what does that mean in a CD 1 race in which Wilson beats Madrid by a mere 900 votes. I'll tell you...it means we are fucked if we have a primary elections officer in the entire state who doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground.
70% Fucking unbelievable.
Posted by: | Mar 6, 2008 2:08:32 PM
Unbelievable. Isn't it time that Herrera herself start answering media inquiries? How about coming out and personally speaking to the voters about what's going on? She did manage to appear for a few minutes at the Bernalillo County preprimary convention last weekend, but only to state that nothing's wrong on her end. She's a snake.
Posted by: preprimary delegate | Mar 6, 2008 2:22:20 PM
